[The White House-owned media
have become a threat to our national security. Koshering the bombers: One step
toward Jihadism, two steps back. df]
From TIME:
As police continue to search
Boston for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old believed to be partly
responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings along with his older brother
Tamerlan, a key question remains unanswered: What motivated the brothers?
Each of them has left
possible clues online.
Tamerlan, who was killed in
a shootout earlier today, appears to have been sympathetic to Islamist
radicalism. Five months ago he appears to have created a channel on YouTube
called “Terrorists.” The channel features videos from the one of the leaders
of the insurgency in Dagestan who goes by the name Amir Abu Dudzhan. YouTube
appears to have removed two of the videos but in a third features Dudzhan
calling for jihad. Holding a Kalashnikov rifle, he says, “Jihad is the duty of
every able-bodied Muslim.” Among the other videos on his channel is one of
Timur Mutsuraev, the bard of the Chechen resistance in the 1990s; it features
his song, “We will devote our lives to jihad.”
The younger brother,
Dzokhar, attended school in the Russian Republic of Dagestan from 1999 to
2001, a war-torn part of Russia next to Chechnya, according to his page on a
Russian social networking site, Vkontakte. But even though Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
indicates on the page an interest in conflicts and causes that have at times
been connected to terrorist no solid evidence has emerged so far to suggest
that he is motivated by religious or nationalist causes.
On his Vkontakte page he
posted video messages sympathetic to the cause of Chechen independence—but
Chechen independence from Russia is a cause that has the support of secular as
well as Islamist activists. He also expresses sympathy for rebel fighters in
Syria and elsewhere. One video bears the Russian title “For those who have a
heart,” showing people being brutalized by uniformed men in a country the
video identifies as Syria. “They are killing your brothers and sisters without
any reason,” the Russian subtitles of the video read. “Simply because they say
our Lord is Allah.” The conflict in Syria, however, is almost entirely fought
by Muslims on both the rebel and government sides—although the war is
increasingly marked by sectarianism, with the Sunni Muslim majority making up
the bulk of the rebel forces and the Alawite minority generally supporting the
government of Bashar Assad.
Another video on his page
seems at first glance to suggest a sympathy for Salafi Islam, an extreme form
of Sunni Islam. The video is posted from a blog named Salyafi Street—but it
turns out to be about a young blind boy who thanks God for his blindness
because it will mean greater mercy for him when God’s judgement comes.
Such videos are relatively
common among Muslim youth throughout Russia—and in the ethnic Chechen
diaspora—and Tsarnaev’s page contains much lighter fare as well. It features
clips from a Russian sketch comedy show that plays on the accents of men from
Chechnya and other regions of the Russian Caucasus. In many ways the page
seems to be that of a normal ethnically Chechen kid.
It’s unclear when Tsarnaev
left the Caucasus region and moved to the United States. An uncle told CNN
that the family lived for some time in Kyrgzstan before coming to the United
States.According to classmates interviewed by CNN, he went to high school in
Boston and worked at Harvard University. One of his acquaintances recalled a
conversation Tsarnaev had with a classmate during which Tsarnaev allegedly
said, “in relation to acts of terrorism, he said it was not a serious issue if
you come from a place where I come from,” the acquaintance, Eric Machado, told
CNN. “Those comments raised a red flag in my head.”
In 2011 Tsarnaev appears to
have won a city of Cambridge scholarship of $2,500. In February 2011 he was
the Cambridge student of the month for his wrestling prowess; wrestling is the
national pastime of Chechnya and the Caucasus.
The Associated Press spoke
to Tsarnaev’s father, who was in the Russian city of Makhachkala, which is the
capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan. “My son is a true angel,” Anzor
Tsarnaev told the AP. In a separate interview with the Russian news agency
Interfax, their father said, “Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the
U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays
here.”
###
Dan Friedman
NYC
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